Sunday, August 15, 2010

End refugee free-for-all Build off-shore processing centre before allowing them into Canada

Great news for health care!
The Victoria General Hospital is reopening a whole ward that had been shut down. They’re even contemplating dusting off an extra emergency department. No more waiting lists in that B.C. city!
Just joking.
The VGH is indeed doing all of that, but it’s not for mere Canadians.
It’s for a ship of 490 Tamils from Sri Lanka who decided they’d like to move to Canada, but don’t want to bother asking us first, or waiting in line like everyone else.
Reports from the ship say there was an outbreak of tuberculosis.
It’s a safe bet the B.C. department of health didn’t set aside millions of dollars in their budget for that Third World disease.
No problem — just take it away from MRIs or cataract surgeries. No one will notice, and if they do, let’s just call them racist.
Question: If a Canadian waiting for surgery were to get on that boat, could he jump to the front of the health-care line, too? Or is that privilege only for non-citizens, non-taxpayers?
The ship, the MV Sun Sea, was not originally destined for Canada. We’re an awfully long journey from Sri Lanka, an island country just off the tip of India.
No, they were en route to Australia, but changed course when their captain decided Australia’s navy would intercept the ship and turn it away. Canada, internationally known as a soft touch with generous welfare and free health care, was the obvious alternative.
Question: If Australia’s left-wing Labour government is willing to defend its shores, why is our right-wing Conservative government unwilling to do so?
Our navy didn’t stop the Tamils. We escorted them in, like ushers at the theatre.
Sri Lanka is not a nice place to live, in part because of the 30-year civil war waged against it by the Tamil Tigers, a terrorist organization.
More than 80,000 people have been killed in that war, but in May 2009 the Sri Lankan army finally crushed the Tamil stronghold on the island and killed its leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran.
Still, terrorists continue to organize and fundraise, especially in Toronto where 200,000 Tamils live.
But with the war over, life in Sri Lanka has improved — so much so that the United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees says the security situation there is “greatly improved,” and countries of the world should no longer presume someone fleeing Sri Lanka is a genuine refugee.
Question: Why are we pretending these Tamils are refugees, when even the bleeding hearts at the UN don’t?
Let’s ask Gurbax Singh Malhi, a Liberal MP who spoke at a Tamil Tiger rally on Parliament Hill last March, surrounded by the terrorist group’s flags and portraits of Prabhakaran.
“You’re here today for a great cause,” he said. “I am helping you guys, I’m behind you because you’re fighting for the right cause.”
Question: What cause was Malhi referring to? The terrorist war in Sri Lanka? Or the cause of 200,000 Toronto Tamils voting for Malhi’s party?
Let’s do what Australia does. They have a small island 2,600 km off the coast of Perth. It’s actually closer to other countries, like Indonesia.
Australia built an 800-bed holding centre on the island. It’s not a prison, but it’s not a resort either.
When ships full of gatecrashers are caught, they’re steered to Christmas Island, which is not considered Australian soil from an immigration point of view.
They wait there until their refugee claims are processed — and are kicked out if they’re bogus. No living it up in the big city, no disappearing into a 200,000 person diaspora.
Let’s build a Christmas Island. We can do it on one of our remote islands off the West Coast, maybe in the Queen Charlottes.
Food and medicine, immigration officials and CSIS — and no legal rights to anything more, not even to vote for Mr. Malhi.
ezra.levant@sunmedia.ca http://www.torontosun.com/comment/columnists/2010/08/13/15017726.html